A1 - Laszló Koloszar
PB - Production Engineering Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Polish Association for Production Management
N2 - One of the key factors of a competitive economy is creating a strong, internationally competitive
SME sector. This essay is based on the fact that management tools used in the
SME sector are insufficient. With the development of these tools, the competitiveness of
companies could improve. According to the literature, using lean thinking has a positive
influence on the company’s effectiveness, and also proved that lean approach can be successfully
extended out of the car industry, into the limitedly resourced SME sector, too. Even
though the topic of lean manufacturing is analysed by many studies, there is a lack of papers
dealing with its usage in the SME sector.
The originality of this paper lies in analysing the current status of using lean manufacturing
practices among the Hungarian SMEs operating in the manufacturing industry. The paper
includes an examination about how deeply the elements of lean thinking are present in
the Hungarian SME sector, how large the development reserves are, and whether there is
a difference between the usage of lean practices.
A structured questionnaire was used for data collection. SMEs’ representatives, mostly CEOs
and managers from the Hungarian manufacturing industry participated in the survey. The
sample contained 128 observations. The study has two control variables, which are the size
of the company and the relation to the lean management.
The survey brought the following results. First of all, it shows that the level of using lean
is low among the Hungarian SMEs. Furthermore, customer orientation is a key factor in
the sector, however, there are considerable possibilities for progress by the inner processes
and the handling and involvement of the suppliers. Firstly, a good basis to increase the
effectiveness could be the creation of thinking in processes influencing the supply chain.
Secondly, the development of the leadership and the involvement of the employees at some
level are also significant. Key findings is that without state incitement and the involvement
of outside experts, progress cannot be expected to spread on a broad scope.
The background of the research method was created to fit the available literature and to
capable to be used in other countries, too. Moreover, this way the available information can
be expanded with a regional dimension, in case further studies are going to be made.
KW - SMEs
KW - lean implementation
KW - lean manufacturing
KW - lean thinking
KW - Hungarian SMEs
T1 - Opportunities of lean thinking in improving the competitiveness of the Hungarian SME sector